Parts
of West Virginia were digging out from up to three feet of snow
dumped in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, a deluge that cut power
to hundreds of thousands of residents and shut down main highways.

The
thick blanket of snow at higher elevations across the ridges of the
Appalachian Mountains, including in parts of Maryland and
Pennsylvania, also brought concerns that rivers and creeks in
low-lying areas could flood later in the week as the snow melts, with
temperatures expected to reach 60 degrees. Falling trees and
storm-related traffic accidents claimed the lives of three people in
Maryland, three in Pennsylvania and one in West Virginia, state
officials said Tuesday.

Close
to 300,000 West Virginia residents were without power Tuesday
afternoon, as high winds and heavy snow snapped branches and downed
power lines, and officials expected the number to rise. Outages at
several utilities had left some areas without access to water, and
officials were sending out trucks to deliver bottled water.

"West
Virginia continues to be hard hit," said Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin,
a Democrat. "Right now, my main focus is on life safety, power
restoration and critical infrastructure.…We are doing everything we
can to help the folks in need."

More
than 30 of West Virginia's 55 counties had snow, with the heaviest
snowfall at higher elevations, said Liz Sommerville, a National
Weather Service meteorologist in Charleston, W.Va. Bowden, above
3,000 feet, recorded 24 inches by early Tuesday, compared with 16
inches in Beckley, elevation 2,300 feet, and 9 inches in the capital
of Charleston, elevation 980 feet.

"Trees
are coming down. I got a feeling that a lot of weaker structures are
going to come down," said Gary Berti, of Davis, W.Va., where 30
inches of snow had fallen by Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Berti, 54 years
old, said all the stores along the main street of Davis were closed
Tuesday and only pickup trucks with four-wheel drive were braving
secondary roads. Restaurants without power were making food for
rescue workers using gas stoves, he said: "They're cooking
everything they've got because they know they're going to lose it."

Snow
was expected to keep falling on mountainous areas through Wednesday,
and blizzard warnings remained in effect in more than a dozen
counties Tuesday. At lower elevations, snow was expected to turn to
rain by Tuesday night.

The
West Virginia Department of Transportation reported accidents on
three major highways in the state and said fallen trees and power
lines were complicating efforts to clear roads. The agency urged
residents to stay home. Marshall University canceled classes at
various campuses around the state, and West Virginia State University
closed for the day.

Western
Maryland recorded two feet of snow, and blizzard warnings remained in
effect Tuesday. While eastern areas of the state endured some
flooding, officials were bracing for worse, said Ed McDonough, a
spokesman for the Maryland Emergency Management Agency. More than
300,000 people in the state were without power Tuesday, with many
outages in the Baltimore area. About 50 people were evacuated late
Monday from the town of Crisfield, which sits on the Chesapeake Bay,
after floodwaters spilled into homes.

In
Pennsylvania, 1.25 million residents remained without power Tuesday.
Gov. Tom Corbett warned that the central part of the state could see
minor flooding, but far less than what storms last year brought to
the region. The highest point in the state, Mount Davis, received 9
inches of snow, with several more inches expected. There is "nothing
of major significance at this point in time that we have great
concern about," Gov. Corbett said at a midday news briefing.

Pennsylvania
officials planned to have a shelter open in West Chester, Pa., to
house 1,300 people from New Jersey, and another in East Stroudsburg,
Pa., to aid 500 people displaced in New York. In addition,
Pennsylvania officials were providing 35 ambulances and a large
vehicle to transport people, as well as providing a rescue team
requested by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to New Jersey.

Moody's
has threatened to downgrade six of Canada's major banks. The credit
rating agency has expressed concern with ballooning consumer debt in
Canada as well as the spike in house prices in recent years.

A
record number of Canadians visited a food bank this year, an
indication the recession’s legacy continues to bite.

More
than 882,000 people used a food bank this March, a 2.4-per-cent
increase from last year. Demand is now 31-per-cent higher than before
the recession, a study to be released Tuesday says.

Food
banks were never supposed to be a permanent part of Canada’s
landscape. They sprang up during tough economic times in the early
1980s as a temporary way to alleviate hunger. Thirty years later,
more than three quarters of a million Canadians are using food banks
each month.

This
year’s elevated numbers show “the recession is still affecting
us, while low-paying jobs and inadequate social programs continue to
challenge a lot of Canadians,” said Katharine Schmidt, executive
director of Food Banks Canada, which is releasing its 16th annual
tally.

Need
has broadened in the past four years to “those who we might least
expect visit a food bank,” from employed people to homeowners and
two-parent families, the report said.

Nearly
a fifth of employed Canadians are working poor, earning less than
$17,000 a year, reflecting a shift in the economy towards
lower-paying services jobs, Ms. Schmidt noted.

The
statistics show nearly 93,000 people are first-time clients of a food
bank.

Cashama
Charlery is one of them. She arrived in Canada last December from St.
Lucia with her now seven-month-old son, hoping he would have a
brighter future here. She holds a college degree in hospitality from
her home country and has two years’ experience as a customer
services rep for the cellphone company, Digicel.

The
only work she’s found since, however, is erratic shifts at a frozen
food manufacturer that pay $8-an-hour (below minimum wage) with no
benefits. After paying for a babysitter and medical bills, she has no
money left.

“People
don’t see this struggle, they don’t know how hard people are
trying to make it here,” said Ms. Charlery, 22, who gets diapers,
baby food and basic staples from a food bank in north Toronto. “I’m
very ambitious and I know I can make it. ... I just want to have a
chance to show how I can work and give back to this country.”

Demand
varies by province. Newfoundland and Labrador is the only place to
see lower rates of food-bank usage in both the past year, and the
last four years – a reflection of that province’s vastly improved
labour market.

Elsewhere,
Manitoba saw the biggest jump in food-bank clients in the past year.
Usage also rose in Ontario, British Columbia and the other three
Atlantic provinces.

Food
inflation is putting particular pressure on people in the North. One
Iqaluit food bank saw an 18-per-cent jump in the past year, with
reports of $12 milk and $29 cheese spread. Soaring food prices
prompted protests in the region earlier this year.

The
paper recommends boosting access to affordable housing, creating a
new model for food security in the North (where it says food
insecurity has become a “dire” public-health emergency) and
revamping social assistance programs to support self-sufficiency.

The
increased demand may seem at odds with Canada’s modest economic
growth in recent years. But it’s typical to see food bank and
welfare rates rise two to three years after a recession, says John
Stapleton, an independent consultant in Toronto.

“It’s
counter-intuitive, because people think, ‘Oh, well, if the
recession’s over, everybody’s fine.’ It just doesn’t work
that way.”

Rather,
it takes time for the recession to hit home, which might begin with a
job loss, and spiral as severance runs out, support ebbs from family
and friends and savings dry up. “You don’t immediately go into
poverty after a recession starts.”

Social
researchers tend to scrutinize food bank numbers as a proxy for how
low-income people in Canada are faring. Unlike the United States,
Canada doesn’t produce statistics on national welfare rates or the
number of people whose jobless benefits end without landing work,
while information on incomes is published with a two-year lag.

The
annual release is based on counting the number of people who get
groceries and meals over the month of March. It is not independently
verified, though its numbers typically tend to move in tandem with
the unemployment rate.

The
majority of Canadian consumers are overspending each month and some
are counting on luck with a lottery or inheritance, a survey Tuesday
indicated.

The
survey for Credit Canada Debt Solutions and Capital One Canada of 822
consumers in September found one-third of respondents pinned their
hopes on future financial security on winning a lottery jackpot or
inheriting a large sum.

Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday tried to convince Arab
states that an Israeli military strike on Iran would
benefit their interests and
that “a feeling of relief would spread across the region”
immediately following an attack.

After failing to
pressure the Obama administration to back a preventive Israeli strike
on Iran before the US presidential elections, Netanyahu has continued
to make veiled threats of war catered for different audiences.

In
an interview with a French magazine, Netanyahu pushed back
against the claim that an Israeli strike on Iran would destabilize
the region and worsen tensions.

“Five
minutes after, contrary to what the skeptics say, I think a feeling
of relief would spread across the region,” he said.

“Iran
is not popular in the Arab world, far from it, and some governments
in the region, as well as their citizens, have understood that a
nuclear armed Iran would be dangerous for them, not just for Israel,”
he said.

But
experts generally agree that such an attack would spark a regional
war, embolden Iran, and in fact motivate Tehran to build a nuclear
weapon, a decision they have not yet made and one that Netanyahu is
right to say Arab governments don’t want.

As a
recent report by
former government officials, national security experts and retired
military officers concluded last month, the Iranian nuclear program
is too redundant for a surgical strike – probably all Israel is
capable of – to delay the program for any considerable length of
time.

The
report also concluded that an attack would prompt a large-scale
Iranian retaliation that would spark
an uncontrollable regional war,
and this would be severely destabilizing for Arab governments,
contrary to Netanyahu’s pandering.

Importantly,
the report also warned the attack would increase Iran’s
motivation to build a bomb, in order to deter further military action
and that ”achieving more than a temporary setback in Iran’s
nuclear program would require a military operation – including a
land occupation – more taxing than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
combined.”

Netanyahu’s
claim that a war on Iran would be good for Arabs is based on the
tensions the Arab dictatorships in the Middle East have with the
government of Iran. Those tensions come from incompatible competing
national interests, and do not reflect how the actual Arab population
feels about an Israeli strike. That is something Netanyahu ignores
completely

-->

Israel
says Iran has pulled

back from the brink of

nuclear weapon - for now

Iran
has drawn back from its ambition to build a nuclear weapon but the
respite is only temporary and Tehran will still have to be confronted
by next summer, Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, said on
Tuesday.

An
immediate crisis was avoided in the summer when Iran quietly chose to
use over a third of its medium-enriched uranium for civilian
purposes, delaying the moment when it could have built a nuclear
bomb. Without this decision, Mr Barak told The Daily Telegraph, the
situation would “probably” have peaked before the US presidential
election.

In
the event, Iran delayed the “moment of truth” by “eight to 10
months”, but Mr Barak predicted that sanctions and diplomacy would
still fail to resolve the stand-off. If so, he said that Israel and
its allies would probably face the decision over whether to strike
Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2013.

Israel
reserved the right to act alone, added Mr Barak, who stated bluntly
that any “operation against Iran” would be less dangerous “now”
than when the country had crossed the nuclear threshold.

Mr
Barak, the most decorated soldier in Israeli history, became defence
minister five years ago with one driving preoccupation. His central
task – indeed what he views as his historic responsibility – is
to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran from threatening Israel and casting a
shadow over the world.

With
every passing month, Mr Barak believes that Iran is progressing
steadily towards its goal. In his London hotel room, the minister
laid out how, on his watch, Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium
had grown from 850kg to 6.8 tons.

His
gnawing concern is that Tehran will fortify its nuclear plants,
particularly the enrichment facility dug into a mountainside at
Fordow, to the point where they become invulnerable to the striking
power of Israel’s air force. If Iran reaches this “zone of
immunity”, Israel would lose its ability to deal independently with
a crucial threat, forcing the country to trust the rest of the world
and break the principle of self-reliance that underlies its very
foundation.

Earlier
this year, however, Iran delayed the arrival of that moment. Tehran
has amassed 189kg of uranium enriched to 20 per cent purity, a vital
step towards weapons-grade material. In August, the country’s
experts took 38 per cent of this stockpile and converted it into fuel
rods for a civilian research reactor, thus putting off the moment
when they would be able to make uranium of sufficient purity for a
nuclear bomb.

Mr
Barak said this decision “allows contemplating delaying the moment
of truth by eight to 10 months”. As for why Iran had drawn back,
the minister said: “There could be at least three explanations. One
is the public discourse about a possible Israeli or American
operation deterred them from trying to come closer. It could probably
be a diplomatic gambit that they have launched in order to avoid this
issue culminating before the American election, just to gain some
time. It could be a way of telling the IAEA [International Atomic
Energy Agency] 'oh we comply with our commitments’.”

Mr
Barak added: “Maybe it’s a combination of all these three
elements. I cannot tell you for sure.”

Yet
the minister stressed how Iran’s move was not a genuine change of
heart. The fuel rods could be converted back into medium-enriched
uranium, although this would take months and waste much of the
material. In any event, Iran is now using 9,852 centrifuges to enrich
uranium, according to the IAEA, so its stockpile is being
replenished.

Mr
Barak insisted that Iran was still resolved to build nuclear weapons,
predicting that success would trigger an arms race in the Middle East
and “make any non-proliferation regime impossible.Saudi Arabia will
turn nuclear within weeks – according to them. Turkey will turn
nuclear in several years. The new Egypt will have to follow”.The
world would start the “countdown” to the “nightmare” of
“nuclear material ending up in the hands of terrorist groups”.

Because
the possible consequences were so terrible, Mr Barak said that
America and Europe shared Israel’s analysis. “We all agree that
the Iranians are determined to turn into a military nuclear power and
we all share the declaration that we are determined to prevent Iran
from turning nuclear and all options are on the table,” said Mr
Barak. “We mean it – we expect others to mean it as well. So it’s
not something just about us. But we, for obvious reasons, see the
Iranian threat in much more concrete terms.”

In
the final analysis, Mr Barak insisted that Israel would decide for
itself whether to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. “When it
comes to the very core of our security interests and, in a way, the
future of Israel, we cannot delegate the responsibility for making
decisions even into the hands of our most trusted and trustworthy
ally,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that we would be sorry if the
Iranians come to the conclusion on their own. The opposite is true.
But, if no one acts, we will have to contemplate action.”

He
added: “Basically, it’s about the question of when they come into
this zone of immunity, where no Israeli surgical attack, probably
somewhat later not even an American surgical attack, can delay them
significantly. That’s the issue that bothers us.”

As
for when Iran will reach the “zone of immunity”, depriving Israel
of its military option, Mr Barak forecast this would probably happen
“next spring or early summer”.

Mr
Barak acknowledged that the sanctions on Iran were “unprecedented
in scale and depth”, but he still predicted their failure. “To
tell you the truth, out of long experience of the Middle East, I am
extremely sceptical about the chances that it will lead the
ayatollahs to sit together at any point in the foreseeable future and
decide to give up their intention to go in the footsteps of Pakistan
and North Korea and turn into a military nuclear power,” he said.

“They
think of themselves as a major regional power from the dawn of
history and they are determined not to fall into the trap that, in
their mind, in their judgment, the late Gaddafi fell into.”

The
costs and risks of a preventive war would only mount, so the option
of acting “now” must be retained, he stressed. “It’s not a
minor decision to contemplate an operation against Iran, but however
complicated, dangerous – it probably carries some unintended
consequences – an operation against Iran could be now – think of
what it means to try it when Iran is already nuclear, several years
down the stream,” he said.

“It
would be much more complicated, much more dangerous and – with
far-reaching, unintended potential consequences – much more costly
in terms of human lives.”

Mr
Barak offered a message of cold realism. “Don’t misread me,” he
said. “We would love to wake up one morning and learn, against my
expectations, that the ayatollahs gave it up. I don’t believe it
will happen.”

The
spectre of hospitals going bankrupt is raised today in a damning
report by MPs which suggests that one in five NHS trusts is in
serious financial trouble and “there is a real concern that some
will fail”.

The
scale of the challenge facing the NHS is revealed in figures showing
that 34 trusts ran up combined debts of £356m in 2011-12 and another
42 relied on handouts from local health authorities or the Department
of Health (DoH) to keep them going – almost 19 per cent of the 411
NHS organisations in total, MPs say.

Although
the NHS as a whole is in surplus, parts of it are facing bankruptcy.
But the DoH has been unable to explain what will happen if a trust
fails to pay its debts or how services to patients would be
maintained.

The
broadside from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) comes as
administrators appointed to oversee the crisis-hit South London NHS
Healthcare Trust recommended that it be broken up and run by
neighbouring NHS trusts, or offered to private companies.

The
trust, which runs three hospitals in south London – the Princess
Royal in Bromley, the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich and Queen Mary's in
Sidcup – overspent by £65m last year, or more than £1m a week,
and became the first in the country to be taken over by
government-appointed administrators.

The
same fate awaits other trusts unless they take radical action to cut
budgets by closing departments and merging services with neighbouring
organisations. Barking Havering and Redbridge received £55m in
handouts from the DoH last year, Peterborough and Stamford got £41m
and Mid-Staffordshire received £21m, according to the National Audit
Office.

The
DoH expects every trust to have to reconfigure services, but the PAC
said there was an "alarming" lack of data to help them
compare options.

Margaret
Hodge, the PAC chair, said: "The DoH could not explain to us how
it will deal with an NHS trust that goes bankrupt. Nor could it
provide reassurance that financial problems would not damage the
quality of care or equality of access to all citizens, wherever they
live.

"The
overall surplus of £2.1bn across all NHS bodies in 2011-12 masks the
fact that a significant minority are in financial difficulty. In
London, two trusts have a combined deficit of £115m, one of which,
South London Healthcare NHS Trust, has been placed in special
administration.

Ms
Hodge added: "It very much looks like the department is
inventing rules and processes on the hoof rather than anticipating
problems and establishing risk protocols."

The
committee is especially critical of the effect of Private Finance
Initiative (PFI) deals, used to build or redevelop hospitals, which
"inevitably distort priorities" and are "especially
worrying at a time when resources are constrained".

Contracts
agreed under the PFI scheme are covered by safeguards which guarantee
that investors have first call on NHS cash. The DoH is already facing
a bill of £1.5bn to bail out seven trusts with PFI problems –
equivalent to £60m a year, the PAC says.

"We
are particularly concerned that the financial viability of a number
of trusts is being undermined by the fact that they are locked into
unaffordable PFI contracts. It is unclear how the department will
continue to underwrite payments once most of the money moves to the
NHS Commissioning Board," Ms Hodge said.

Critical
list: London hospitals facing uncertain future

A
bankrupt NHS trust operating three hospitals that serve a million
people in south London looks set to be carved up between the NHS and
the private sector, according to controversial proposals to be
revealed today.

South
London NHS Healthcare Trust was declared bust and administrators
called in three months ago after overspending about £1m a week to
accumulate debts of £150m.

Its
three hospitals, Queen Mary's in Sidcup, Princess Royal (PRU) in
Bromley and Queen Elizabeth (QEH) in Woolwich – have struggled with
patient satisfaction and spiralling debt since they were merged into
a super-trust in 2009.

Matthew
Kershaw was parachuted in as special administrator by Andrew Lansley,
the former Health Secretary, after it became clear that its two
hugely expensive private finance initiative (PFI) deals meant the
status quo was impossible for the taxpayer to sustain.

Mr
Kershaw's radical proposals would have a knock-on effect for
neighbouring hospitals, including the merger of the PFI-built QEH
with the neighbouring Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust, with the loss of
one A&E department.

The
PRU could be taken over by King's College Hospital NHS Foundation
Trust or, more controversially, its services put out to tender –
keeping alive several private companies' hopes for a slice of the
franchise.

One
of the biggest changes would see Queen Mary's taken over by a mental
health foundation trust, Oxleas, and land sold off to pay the debts.
The new "health campus" would no longer provide complex
surgery but would concentrate on day cases, radiotherapy and
endoscopy.

Mr
Kershaw called on the Government to pay "the excess costs"
of the two PFI hospitals until the 25-year contracts expire. He also
recommends a comprehensive re-organisation of emergency, community,
maternity and elective services across south-east London.

Thirty-nine
organisations have expressed interest in running parts of the trust,
including Circle, Care UK, Serco and Virgin Care.

The
proposals will now go out to public consultation for 30 days, and
Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, is expected to make a decision
early in February.

The
Zurich-based bank plans to reduce its headcount from 64,000 to 54,000
by 2015, with some 75% of the losses made outside Switzerland.

UBS,
which has around 6,500 staff in London, said the restructuring would
deliver savings of 5.4 billion Swiss francs (£3.5 billion) by 2015.

The
bank, which wants to shift focus away from investment banking
operations, reported a 40% slide in pre-tax operating profits to 2.3
billion Swiss francs (£1.5 billion) in the six months to June 30.

UBS
wants to concentrate on its traditional strengths in advisory,
research, equities, foreign exchange and precious metals and exit
other business lines, mainly in fixed income.

The
bank said these divisions had been "rendered uneconomical by
changes in regulation and market developments".

The
job cuts will target "front-to-back processes" across the
bank, UBS said, and simplify its product portfolio and production
processes.

Group
chief executive Sergio Ermotti said: "This decision has been a
difficult one, particularly in a business such as ours that is all
about its people.

"Some
reductions will result from natural attrition and we will take
whatever measures we can to mitigate the overall effect. Throughout
the process we will ensure that our people will be supported and
treated with care."

The
bank announced the plans as part of its third-quarter results, which
revealed a loss of 2.2 billion Swiss francs (£1.4 billion) in the
three months to September, compared with a profit of 1 billion Swiss
francs (£670 million) last year.

The
loss was driven by a one-off charge of 3.1 billion Swiss francs (£2
billion) linked to the restructuring of its investment banking
division and a debt-related charge of 863 million Swiss francs (£574
million), UBS said.

Andrew
Haldane, a member of the Bank’s financial policy committee, said
the Occupy movement was correct in its attack on the international
financial system.

The
Occupy movement sprang up last year and staged significant
demonstrations in both the City of London and New York, protesting
about the unequal distribution of wealth and the influence of the
financial services industry. Members of the movement occupied the
grounds of St Paul’s and remained camped there for more than three
months until police evicted them in February last year.

“Occupy
has been successful in its efforts to popularise the problems of the
global financial system for one very simple reason; they are right,”
Mr Haldane said last night. Mr Haldane, the Bank’s executive
director for financial stability, was speaking to Occupy Economics,
an offshoot of the Occupy movement, at an event in central London.

In
a speech entitled Socially Useful Banking, he said the protesters had
helped bring about a “reformation” in financial services and the
way they are regulated.

Partly
because of the protests, he suggested, both bank executives and
policymakers were persuaded that banks must behave in a more moral
way, and take greater account of inequality in wider society.

“Occupy’s
voice has been both loud and persuasive and policymakers have
listened and are acting,” he said. “In fact, I want to argue that
we are in the early stages of a reformation of finance, a reformation
which Occupy has helped stir.”

The
protesters had been right about bankers’ behaviour and the
consequences of extremely high salaries and bonuses in the financial
sector and other industries, he said.

“I
do not just mean right in a moral sense,” he added.

“It
is the analytical, every bit as much as the moral, ground that Occupy
has taken. For the hard-headed facts suggest that, at the heart of
the global financial crisis, were — and are — problems of deep
and rising inequality.”

Mr
Haldane concluded by telling the activists that they had helped bring
about nothing less than a new financial order.

“If
I am right and a new leaf is being turned, then Occupy will have
played a key role in this fledgling financial reformation,” he
said.

“You
have put the arguments. You have helped win the debate.”

In
the text of his speech distributed by the Bank last night, Mr Haldane
made no reference to the techniques employed by the Occupy
protesters.

The
occupation of St Paul’s last year was controversial, and led to
claims that the protesters were despoiling the cathedral’s grounds.

The
protest ended after the Corporation of London won a legal order
allowing the activists to be evicted.

Earlier
this month, members of the group marked the first anniversary of the
St Paul’s protest by entering the cathedral during a service and
chaining themselves to the pulpit.

As
everyone who has been to New York City knows, without its underground
arteries - the subway
system - the city is
if not dead, than certainly in an indefinite coma. By that logic, New
York will not get out of the critical ward for many days, because
hours ago the head of the New York City’s transit system just
called Hurricane Sandy "the
most devastating event to the city’s subway system ever."
At last check seven subway tunnels under the East River had flooded,
as did the Queens Midtown Tunnel—and Metropolitan Transit Authority
chairman Joseph Lhota said there is “no firm timeline” for when
the system would be back up and running. According to other MTA
employees it would take
between 14 hours and 4 days just to pump the water out of the subway
system. We'll take the
over. And as long as there are no subways, there are no clerical and
support workers, there is no Wall Street, there is no beating heart
to the city.

Seven subway
tunnels under the East River flooded, according to Joseph J. Lhota,
the Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman. A spokesman said
it was unclear how long it would take to pump them out. The Long
Island Rail Road erected a water dam at its West Side Yards to keep
Penn Station and East River tunnels dry, but one tunnel had flooding,
Mr. Lhota said. Metro North lost power on two of its lines north of
59th Street.